How American Healthcare will die.

The simple assumption underlying America's approach to healthcare is that the market price is wrong. In any market where one adjusts prices for these sorts of reasons, there is either a glut or a deficiency. Here, if the assumption that the market price is too high, one will produce deficiencies.

The underlying assumption, which is not entirely wrong, is that there is a price-fixing cabal which is driving the prices up "faster than inflation." This is an assumption which discards other reasons for price increases - that efficiency is lowered opposite the general trend over time where innovation decreases costs; or that inflation drives prices up artificially. The cabal might well be the government-industry tangle which has been forced upon the healthcare market. This is getting treated with Steroids now, being bulked up.

One element which I believe to be central is that "inflation" and the "healthcare CPI" are one and the same. There are other things in the artificial "CPI index" which cause it to be reported as abnormally LOW. Several economists, such as John Williams on Shadowstats, believe that inflation is actually MUCH higher than reported. Until 2009, the decade's inflation rate has been about 6% - which brings us to about 60% in constant dollars to what we had in 2000.

And efficiency IS lowered - not because healthcare is a free-market commodity, but precisely the opposite. Few people realize that much of physicians' reimbursements are set by Medicare already. The private insurers then negotiate reimbursement as a Percentage of Medicare. Doctors salaries are adjusted politically by measure of the mean state income and "costs" in the various states.

We pretend that lowering price and raising demand will force the innovators to improve quality. The system is seen as burdened by overhead and profit-taking. Overhead cannot be signficantly improved until such things as internal auditing, measuring and "efficiency charting" are reduced. That will not happen.

It takes a certain bit of punitive and harsh attitude to ram changes through at the expense of a certain sector. There is certainly that sort of ire against American healthcare now, and it has been simmering for a long time.

Unfortunately, "punishing healthcare to make it better" is likely to fail.

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healthcare, economics

Land of the Famous, Home of the Handsome.

One of the reason that this country's on the Express train to hell, driven by the mass of the citizenry, Cons and Libs alike, is the worship of the Nobility. Here in America, it's not Charles and Di, but Brangelina.

A Republic simply flourishes without a pecking order, a social rank. If the President is merely "Mr. President," as that low-brow radical Washington started off the tradition with, and if public servants are, well, public servants, then the Republic is in good stead.

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I offer the following from correspondence. The following is in response to an opinion piece on the evils of Socialized Medicine.

You offer a powerful MORAL article about socialism. Consider also the one that makes it more attractive to Americans - the esthetic argument.

We propose to give to the beautiful, by means of theft from the ugly. America is a celebrity-based society, and we worship the beautiful people. This even extends to beautiful things, such as the polar bear, which is in danger of extinction, and the dolphin and the tiger - all aesthetically-selected creatures, not the horsetail and whipworm and sea cucumber, which may well be in the same danger, but are ugly-ass suckers.

The sixteen-hour operation to separate the Siamese Twins, that's one of the greatest mediamedicine shows, costing - somebody? - hundreds of thousands of dollars. If we pool our money, we can pay for these blockbuster shows, at the expense of the rural Alabama kid with Down's Syndrome, and HER need for surgery on an annular pancreas.

The paradox of Socialism is that the "somebody" who pays for it, is usually the powerless. Not the Park Avenue tobacco heiress in her endangered-species furs; no, that's the bait. The switch is to the "citizen." Socialism depends on there being a lowest-rank called "citizen." It's society's loser. In the Soviet Union, you were called "citizen" when you were convicted of a felony - no more "comrade" for you!

It means the sacrifice for the Visible by the Invisible, the Named by the Nameless, the Party Member by the prole. The nobility, in what ever form that society creates it, has a RIGHT to be free of need; and it is the prole who fills that need. Some folks like Jefferson and Madison found that sort of thinking revolting - literally.

And it is always uncouth and Philistine to say - screw the famous! F-off and die, you powerful! Why is it my duty, to care for the rich and famous - why is Katie Couric's brother or Oprah's postman's son more important than my alcoholic brother who lives in the trailer, whom I support?

That's an aesthetic approach to socialism.

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All we ever do is change the measure of ranking. Gay men who smoke, in San Francisco, have not changed in their social loathesomness from 1950 to today. Think of that!

We are always proud of our "changes in tolerance," i.e. our shifting of the social order. But few even question the fundamentals of social order itself.

But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Thomas Jefferson

I can never pass by Jefferson with simply one quote. We now live in tyranny, the Golem our own creation; with the blame upon our selves, and no excuse that we are unwarned.

• I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.
• If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.
• Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.